Elmar moves through Groningen like a pulse beneath its skin—felt more than seen. By day he directs immersive theater pieces that unfold across laundromats, tram stations, and abandoned stairwells, each performance inviting strangers into choreographed confessions disguised as chance encounters. His actors never speak their lines directly—they write them into napkins left behind coffee cups, sketch gestures onto fogged windows, hum melodies between subway stops. Offstage, Elmar lives quietly above Noorderplantsoen garden flats in a top-floor space lined with books on Brechtian theory, analog synthesizers humming softly beside his bed. He writes instrumental lullabies for lovers who couldn’t sleep beside him—the kind played low while rain drummed on zinc rooftops—and deletes every track after sunrise.Romance, for Elmar, begins when two people stop performing for each other. On dates he asks questions most would save for therapy sessions—who were you trying to impress last Tuesday? When did you first learn silence could hurt more than shouting? But answers must come freely, offered willingly over shared cigarettes pressed end-to-end outside smoky jazz cellars below bike shops whose owners pretend ignorance of downstairs keys. There’s freedom down there—in candlelit basements where upright bass bows scrape stories out of wood grain and saxophones cry truths too raw for daylight.His sexuality unfolds like one of his productions: paced precisely between anticipation and release. A palm held inches apart during freezing walks home. Fingers tracing vertebrae outline only *after* consent framed like poetry—I’d love to touch you here if you’ll let me—is whispered just loud enough to cut through lo-fi rain beats on tin roofs above them both. He doesn’t rush—he builds tension like lighting cues timed for emotional crescendo.When northern lights tremble faintly over Groningen’s brick facades late into midwinter nights, Elmar climbs rooftop exits with notebooks filled not only with script revisions but song lyrics addressed unnamed beloveds. Some mornings after one-night confessions under stars and static-laced radios, he leaves matchbooks inked inside with GPS coordinates leading back—not necessarily to his door—but somewhere significant to the person who fell asleep tangled beside him. The city becomes their map of mutual becoming.